From The Romney Campaign To Megyn Kelly’s Mouth!

Did Megyn Kelly bother to do any research before she showcased, in a lapdog interview, the star of Mitt Romney’s “My Hands Didn’t Build This” campaign ad? As part of Fox’s ongoing attacks oncoverage of President Obama’s comments about small businesses, she presented “small business owner” Jack Gilchrist without noting that his own business’ history is a poster child for President Obama’s exact point (that the federal government is a necessary help to businesses) that Romney was trying to attack in the ad.

As we’ve previouslynoted, Fox and the Republicans have been doing their best to make political hay out of President’s remark, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen.” As we’ve also noted, President Obama was not dissing small businesses (as Fox and Romney are pretending) but making the point that businesses depend on government for things like roads, bridges, the internet, etc. and that “we’re in this together.”

Yet the star of Romney’s attack ad on the subject just so happens to owe a sizable chunk of his own business to the federal government. And somehow, Kelly either didn’t know that or didn’t reveal it to the “we report, you decide” network’s viewers.

TheNew Hampshire Union Leader’s John DiStato today reports that in 1999 the business in question, Gilchrist Metal, “received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority ‘to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment’…” In addition, in 2011, Gilchrist Metal “received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller, $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008…”

Instead, Kelly offered Gilchrist repeated openings to attack President Obama, such as asking Gilchrist for a “reaction… and in particular in the first part about how (Obama says) successful business people often think (success is) because they’re so smart or they just worked harder than everybody else.”

Kelly also asked this fawning question: You work in metal fabrication and your Dad has an amazing story, too… Why did your small business survive and the others didn’t?

Gilchrist answered, “It takes some good fortune, there’s no doubt about it.”

Yes, and it helps to have “good fortune” via the federal government. But having a news network accept without question every word of the star of a Republican campaign ad can’t hurt, either.